How to Make Powerful and Effective Business Presentation – 5 Successful Secrets

How to Make Powerful and Effective Business Presentation – 5 Successful Secrets

Corporate presentations add influential visuals to the message and are an easy way to create a leave-behind handout or e-mail the presentation to others later. But too often business presenters aren’t as effective as they could be when making a PowerPoint presentation. Be it as a report, sales prop or a Business plan for investors. A good presentation creates the first impression which lasts. Conveying your message in a short presentation with clarity is everything. Therefore the simplicity in business presentation design plays an important role here.

Given that you have limited time to present and captivate investors or your team, presenting with passion, simplicity and power is paramount. Business presentations usually are promoting an idea or a product or a position and should reflect topnotch salesmanship in the best sense of the word. In case of a Business plan, creating a PowerPoint presentation, or deck is a quick, to-the-point means of revealing your best selling points to those reviewing it, while still sending over your more detailed plan. To exactly do so, here are some tried and tested tips for corporate presentations.

1. Start with the structure: The best way to structure your presentation is to first lay out your thoughts, ideas and the message you want to deliver on a paper first. You might even want to look at few corporate presentation examples before starting. Start by defining the goal your presentation. Once you have the starting point and destination, you can now plan the route that you will use to take the audience through your presentation. Also, how to decide how long should you present and how many slides do you need to get your point across? It’s simple, use the 10–20–30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes and a minimum 30-point font. Although sometimes when you are presenting alongside with fellow presenters, you might be given a restricted time beforehand, if that’s the case, prepare the slides and speech accordingly. Although presentations for different purposes vary greatly based on their purpose, we have laid out some essential details for widely used presentations like Business plans or sales decks.

Here’s a rough idea for 10 slides of Business plan

Your first slide is your title slide, which provides the name of the business, your name, title and contact information, plus a slogan if you have one.

Second slide is the problem your potential customers in the target market face

The third slide is your unique solution in simple terms how your product/service will solve the problem.

Your Business model or how you plan to make money, what could be your pricing structure is the fourth slide

In the fifth slide, talk a little in detail about your operations. Quantitative is the key word

Present a brief marketing plan now, on what media you would use and why

Who are the important people in your team, what are their responsibilities on 8th slide

This next slide should show a clear financial projection with a three-to-five-year forecast along with the method you used to project.

The final slide should present your current position and what have you done so far. Present a positive call to action based on what you’ve accomplished to date and what you’ll accomplish in the future.

For a sales deck you need not show your operational, financial, and marketing plans. Mention only your competitive advantage and the clients you have worked so far with to build a trust.

2. Flashy colors and fonts are a strict No: Take extra care that the fonts and theme you use match with the concept of your company and yet should not be too flashy. There are many professional fonts available online. Check them out and go with what works best for your presentation color scheme. If your slide looks anything like this, we recommend you to STOP using those fonts!

3. Use visuals instead of text Slides: Avoid adding too much text on the slides. Use diagrams, graphs, flowcharts and media clips to illustrate data or a scenario. This engages your audience and increases your chances of sales.

4. Avoid Jargon: Don’t use jargon. Even when you are presenting to people from your industry, not everyone is deeply embedded with the technical mumbo jumbo. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, go with plain, simple yet powerful words. You can find some powerful words to use here

5. Remember, less is more: Do not, we repeat do not overload your presentation with lots of information. It will overwhelm your listeners, you can always send in a full plan with more details or lif delivering it to a large audience where you cannot send the details individually, fill in whatever details you feel necessary during your speech, still not dumping information over them.

Next time, you want to make a presentation, use these tips, and see the difference for yourself. Do you agree these secrets are useful? Tell us more in comments.